Shurtugal wrote:Cool boat *ahem* trireme, Socrates! A little more background would be nice, is a trireme a specialized type of boat or something? Anyway, it look awesome!

Woah, didn't see your post.

Triremes (Greek Τριήρεις pl. (Τριήρης sing.)) are several different types of ancient warships. In English no differentiation is made between the Greek trieres and the Latin triremes. This can confuse, while in other languages these describe different ships.

The early type had three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar. They originated with the Phoenicians and are best known from the fleets of Ancient Greece. The early trireme was a development of the pentekonter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side. The trireme's staggered seating permitted three benches per vertical section with an oarsmen on each. The outrigger above the gunwale, projecting laterally beyond it, kept the third row of oars on deck out of the way of the first two under deck. Early triremes were the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th century BC.

The heavily armored Greek/Phoenician trireme was the mainstay of most navies during the times of quinquiremes/penteres. Like these, all rowers were now protected under deck and battle was mainly fought by marines. A different system of classification was also used, referring to the men per vertical section, so that they did not necessarily have three rows of oars any more.

Light Roman triremes supplanted the liburnians in the late Roman navy. They were like the early triremes a light type of warship, but with 150 rowers under deck instead of 170, with little armor, but significantly more marines and less structural support for ramming. Later it developed into the heavier dromon.

Hey, just to back up the quote from Socrates, the trireme did in fact take its name from the 3 tiers of rowers. Such rowing was very strenuous, and demanded lots of coordination, so the rowers were citizens, not slaves. (slaves could get out of sync and break oars, crippling the trireme.) Rowed by devoted people, it was surprisingly agile.

Marines fought on deck, but one of the most distinctive aspects of a trireme was the metal nose at the water level, usually decorated, used to ram other ships and sink them. A few years back, (well, more like the mid 80's) the Greek government hired historians, carpenters, the works to build a replica trireme, and had a crew of 170 rowers take for a spin. A Classics Prof I know got to be a rower, which is how I found out about this. More info can be found at: